Over the last decade, there have been major strides to develop battery-driven electric vehicles for land, sea and air travel. These vehicles are aimed to reduce the pollution from current vehicles, as well as reducing dependence on fossil fuels.
One major limitation of current electric vehicles is that their batteries provide enough power only for short trips of typically less than 100 kilometers. Moreover, current battery charging techniques are slow and time-consuming, increasing both the journey time and the dependency on charging stations.
Another problem is that the power may be used up in traffic jams, air-conditioning and heating of the vehicle and the actual distance travelable by the vehicle without charging may be significantly less than the original estimate. These disadvantages render electric vehicles impractical and uneconomic.
Some attempts to overcome these problems have been published in several published patent applications. A first group of patent applications relates to static charging stations.
US Patent Application Publication No. US2010071979 to Agassi et al., describes an electric vehicle including a battery pack that can be exchanged at a battery exchange station. At the battery exchange station, an at least partially spent battery pack is exchanged for an at least partially charged battery pack. A battery bay is configured to be disposed at an underside of the electric vehicle. The battery bay includes a frame which defines a cavity. The cavity is configured to at least partially receive the battery pack therein. The battery bay comprises at least one latch rotatably pivoted about an axis substantially parallel with a plane formed by the underside of the vehicle. The latch is configured to lift, retain the battery pack at least partially within the cavity.
US Patent Application Publication No. US2009082957, to Agassi et al., discloses an electric vehicle that includes an electric motor that drives one or more wheels of the vehicle and is powered by a battery. The electric vehicle determines a status of a battery of the vehicle and a geographic location of the vehicle. The electric vehicle then identifies at least one battery service station that the vehicle can reach based on the charge status of the battery of the vehicle and the geographic location of the vehicle. The electric vehicle displays the at least one battery service station to a user of the vehicle.
British Patent Application Publication No. GB2460500, to Mayer et al., discloses a system for improved and more efficient recharging of electric cars, by using improved batteries, improved recharger arrangements in electric cars, and infrastructures that are used for recharging electric cars, while also protecting the electric grid from overload. This is done for example by accumulating energy in service stations in special high speed capacitors, such as one or more super capacitors, or one or more molten salt accumulators, or other fast batteries which can be recharged to 80 percent capacity within 5 minutes. These accumulators can be used to recharge cars, since otherwise the service station would need to have a huge capacity power supply to enable such fast recharges. Other variations include efficient methods of recharging the batteries serially, either in the service station (based on a model of fast replacement of batteries at the service station), after automatically sorting the batteries into more or less homogeneous groups, or in the car itself by automatically rerouting the batteries, or some of them, or elements in them, during recharge so that they are recharged more serially than during the normal operation of the car. This enables recharge with fewer rechargers at higher voltages and with less current and fewer problems of heat during recharge. Other improvements include a system wherein when recharging the electric cars, rechargers and central computers in the electrical grid company and in the service provider take into account car-specific parameters in order to optimize the recharging priorities, for example based on the state of their batteries and heuristics or statistics or automatic repeated identification of cars based on a unique digital ID number. The system can take into account also various regular or historical car-specific parameters or patterns or statistics, such as typical arrival and departure times, typical distances traveled, specific needs based on week days, etc. Other features include a system and method for alerting users when a parking and recharging post becomes available or reserving them in advance.
French Patent Application Publication No. FR2872470A1 discloses an automatic self-service station for e.g. electric car, has charging hoists for batteries, jack on loading modules to level plate for displacement perpendicular to plate that rotates to put or remove car battery, and cabinet with a payment desk. The station has two charging hoists for batteries, walls which support the hoists, and a roof. A repair pit has loading modules and a staircase permits maintenance service. A jack on the module levels a plate for a displacement perpendicular to another plate which rotates to put or remove the battery of a car. A cabinet has a control and payment desk placed to the side of a car driver.
All the above publications rely on the electric car being able to reach the service station at a fixed location or having a battery replacement service. Moreover, the aforementioned patent publications rely on complex methods for replacing batteries, which require stocks of partially or fully charged batteries and sophisticated systems for removing the at least partially depleted battery (or batteries) and replacing it/them with at least one at least partially charged battery.
Other systems have been developed to financial systems for billing an electric vehicle user for charging of his car battery or battery pack at stationary service stations.
WO10031687A discloses a method and a device for the location-independent power intake of and/or location-independent power feed by a mobile storage and consumption unit at a stationary electric vehicle charging station. The method comprises at least the steps of producing a first communication link between the storage and consumption unit and the electric vehicle charging station when the mobile storage and consumption unit spatially approaches a stationary electric vehicle charging station, a unique ID number being allocated to the storage and consumption unit and the electric vehicle charging station having an electricity counter with a counter number, transmitting a data packet which contains at least the ID number and the counter number via a second communication link to a billing server, allocating the storage and consumption unit to a power supplier using the ID number and allocating the electricity counter to a distribution network operator using the counter number and using the respective data stored on the billing server, clearing the electric vehicle charging station upon successful allocation on the billing server, supplying power to the storage and consumption unit or feeding power from the storage and consumption unit to the electric vehicle charging station and transmitting the quantity of electricity withdrawn from or fed into the electric vehicle charging station to the billing server via the communication link.
US Patent Application Publication No. US2009312903A to IBM et al., discloses a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program product for managing user preferences associated with charging transactions for electric vehicles. In one embodiment, a set of principals associated with a charging transaction for an electric vehicle is identified in response to receiving a request for a set of preferences from an energy transaction planner. The vehicle preference service is located on the electric vehicle. The set of preferences are retrieved from a plurality of preferences. The set of preferences comprises a subset of preferences for each principal in the set of principals. A preference in the set of preferences specifies a parameter of the charging transaction that is to be minimized, maximized, or optimized. The set of preferences are sent to an energy transaction planner.
US Patent Application Publication No. US2010049737A to IBM et al., discloses a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for managing electric vehicle charging information. In one embodiment, the process receives charging process data. The charging process data may be stored in a data repository and associated with a user to form historical user data. The process then generates a notification in response to detecting a condition for triggering the generation of the notification. The notification comprises a set of recommendations for achieving a set of optimization objectives. In addition, the set of recommendations are derived from at least one of the historical user data and a remote data source. Thereafter, the process presents the notification to a user using a set of notification preferences.
Chinese Patent Application CN201371765 describes an electric vehicle service truck with tools for servicing the vehicle and means for charging the battery of the electric vehicle.
U.S. patent application No. 20110025267 teaches a portable vehicle to recharge an electric car, which is controlled through a central control system, as does U.S. Pat. No. 7,619,319.